Ever wondered why people always take advantage of your good nature? You try to help people or do something nice and you end up being reaped off. You sometimes feel used. People know you as a nice person and end up turning you into a paycheck. Maybe you are beginning to consider changing your ways. You are beigning to wonder if the preachers were right when they told you all you have to be is be a good person and bad things will not happen to you. Maybe you're thinking of locking up your heart and refraining from caring about others. Before you make that decision, please take some time to read this blog. I'll attempt to explain the dynamics of living any life resembling the Christ life in this present age.
God is Love,
so God’s power is love power. He operates by Love, nothing he does is motivated
by anything other than love. In the same vein, he created the universe that
operates on community and humans that were made to love and be loved. However,
due to the fall, we have been conditioned to be selfish. We have created a
world system where it is the survival of the fittest. We have abandoned the
original design of this universe and designed a world in the image of Satan.
People are generally seeking ways to dominate each other, to be at an advantage
over others. Even in loving relationships, we can’t resist the urge to have our
way and win arguments. Seldom do we see people who lay down their lives for
their loved ones on a consistent basis. I for one am just learning to do that through
the Holy Spirit. With that being said, it means that in dealing with a people
who have been conditioned to be mostly selfish (remember, it’s a conditioning
and not our nature), the person who walks in love on a consistent basis will
eventually clash with the world. They will inevitably suffer some form of
backlash from the world. There are circumstances where people will take
advantage of the person’s good nature and cheat or try to dominate the person.
“if you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start
hating me. If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one
of its own, but since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the
world’s terms, the world is going to hate you…” John 15: 18-19
This is just the reality we find ourselves in. For a variety of
reasons, to let Jesus live through you is to court conflict with the world.
There is no way around it. Contrary to some modern popular Christian beliefs,
reigning in life does not equate a life where everybody likes you. The poor and
downtrodden might like you, but not those in power. Not the people whose power
structures and means of survival is in jeopardy by our very existence and
lifestyle. We will talk more on these people as time goes by.
If you are in the midst of such persecution right now; maybe you’re
suffering for doing the right thing or you feel hatred coming from your friends
and colleagues or family members for deciding to walk in love, take heart.
Jesus says further:
“When that happens, remember this: Servants
don’t get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will
certainly beat on you. If they did what I told them, they will do what you tell
them...” John 15:19
Jesus was constantly barraged by the disdain of the world,
especially from the powers of his day. He was constantly being tested,
scrutinized and abused. But he never lost his cool. He was so anti-world that
he ended up getting killed in a conspiracy by the Sanhedrin (the religious
establishment of his day) and the Roman empire (the political establishment of
his day). Jesus knew things like this would happen, so he prepared his
disciples for it. He constantly reminded them that to follow him was to go against
the tide of the generation. In doing so, the world would react in one form of
violence or the other. That to me is the definition of Christian suffering. It
is to suffer loss or injury for following Jesus. Not arbitrary sickness and
loss. If we suffer those, it is simply a result of living in an imperfect
world. While lessons might be learnt in those circumstances, it is not God’s
will for us to experience such evil
I don’t know about others but I’ve realized that I cannot
turn back. I cannot stop wishing to live like Christ. My eyes have been opened
to the truth of the love and Grace of God and it has become extremely difficult
to turn back to the world. The moment I caught a glimpse of God’s vision for
the world in the person of Jesus, I was drawn in and couldn’t help myself to
further probe into this. To be arrested by love is to find yourself
compulsively wishing to love others. Sometimes I succeed in it, many times I
don’t, but I can never say I’m no longer following Christ. Whatever may come from
that decision, I know I’m not alone. I’m simply experiencing a small portion of
what the Lord experienced.
“For it
is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for
doing evil. 18 For Christ
also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to
bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in
the Spirit”
1 Peter 3:17-18
In
the passage above we see a clear result of walking like Jesus. To suffer like
Jesus and to reap a reward too. We will discuss this further in the next post.
